This paper utilizes an interdisciplinary approach—combining history, anthropology, sociology and gender studies—to rediscover the lives of African Muslims, free and slave named the Malês, in nineteenth century Salvador, province of Bahia, Brazil. It is an attempt to read the mind of the Malês as a book of poems, chronicling everyday struggles for liberty, what the Muslim labels jihad. The disservice done to the Malês by most historians is based on a profound misunderstanding of jihad. Political and military insurrection— commonly understood as synonymous with jihad—was actually the ultimate and exceptional method of dissenting from the white master’s rule. Maintaining a Muslim identity was the true test of faith and toughest form of jihad. Cultural resistance, in the form of recreating Islam in a New World setting, kept the Malês as part of Dar-us-Salam, (the House of Islam) which besides Africa, by the nineteenth century included the Caribbean and North American Muslim slave communities. Yet, the Malês lived physically in Dar-ul-Harb (the House of War), where politico-religious authority was absent or actively hostile to Islam. In Brazil the two Houses coexisted and clashed, every day in the slave quarters of the planter estate and streets of Salvador.
Source: World Journal of Islamic History and Civilization
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